Wednesday, September 14, 2011

New games institute launches with $30K from MTC

By Rodney H. Brown

The new Massachusetts Digital Games Institute (MassDiGI) continues to draw support from the state, today announcing a $30,000 award from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative to help boost the cooperation between the games industry and academia in the Bay State.

According to a release from MassDiGI, the funding came through the John Adams Innovation Institute, the arm of the MTC that helps the development of industry clusters within the state. The news came today at the official opening of MassDiGI at its home on the campus of Becker College in Worcester.

Specifically, the $30,000 will fund two initiatives. The first is a virtual “Rapid Integration Lab,” which will allow industry and academia to tap into each others’ resources to test and demonstrate “next generation game technologies.” The second initiative is called a “Reverse Sabbatical” program in which game industry professionals would come to Massachusetts schools to help in the development of new game technologies.

MassDiGI was announced in April, at which time the group received an initial funding from the John Adams Innovation Institute of $15,000. Today’s release described that initial amount as $20,000. That funding was used to establish a working group that looked into how to set up the two programs announced today. That group was made up of local game industry veterans Monty Sharma, co-founder of Vivox Inc.; Robert Ferrari, Turbine veteran and vice president of business development and publishing for Sanrio Digital; and Kent Quirk, director of software engineering at Linden Lab.

The institute idea started rolling in October 2010, when Becker College hosted a videogame forum titled MASSImpact, at which Becker College President Robert Johnson got the state officials in attendance – including Lt. Gov. Murray, state Rep. Brian Dempsey of Haverhill and event co-host state Rep. Vincent Pedone of Worcester – to agree to convene a working group to see what the state could do to help the sector grow. MassDiGI is expected to begin full operations in the first quarter of 2012, according to the release. MassDiGI will be guided by a 19-member Advisory Board, which includes business, education, and community leaders and is chaired by the president of Becker College.